I work hard on my little local blog and website. I'm the local expert, with fabulous information that I'm trying to get out there - and it's frustrating being the little guy with limited resources when the big national players can walk all over me in the search engines.
But I fixed that - or I'm in process anyway. It's building momentum.
You have any idea how many people search for an MLS number? A property address that they drove by and are now typing into Google? A subdivision name? LOTS. And that's where players like Trulia tend to win in Google - for individual property addresses, subdivisions, that sort of thing.
So working with ARE-TEC, I got around that. And I'm starting to beat Trulia at their own game.
And in all fairness, I now work with ARE-TEC - it's my hubby's company. Which means I got to help develop this stuff to really meet my needs as an agent. I get to make sure all this new stuff really works before we make it available to everyone else.
So here's what we did.
See, most IDX companies, when you put their MLS search on your site, it is all framed within a tiny piece of code, and all the data - all that lovely, keyword rich, search engine delicious information - isn't found by the search engines on your site. The ARE-TEC search cube? It embeds so simply into any blog - including ActiveRain and Wordpress - but it doesn't let Google look at all of those listings.
But ARE-TEC fixed that, several months ago, quietly tweaking and finding the best way to fix the problem.
It looks like this:
Looks pretty unassuming, doesn't it? But it packs a punch with search engines.
Every tiny little bit of information in the MLS - is now nicely tagged and indexed in the search engines - on MY site. All those keyword rich descriptions and subdivision names and street names - Google finds them on MY site, and relates them to ME. So when people type addresses into Google, my site comes up. When people Google subdivision names, MY site comes up.
How frikking cool is that? Soon, every address in the MLS, every home for sale - if someone types it into Google, my site will appear. Just stop and imagine that for a second.
And once it was installed, it takes no effort or maintenance on my part. Nada.
Which means my little local blog site is starting to win. Not every time, just yet. But we're getting there...
Now, there is an exclusivity element to this. If every agent in my area had it, it'd lose power. So I have an exlusive deal in my city. In fact, ARE-TEC won't sell it to every agent in a city anyway, so availability is on a first-come-first-served basis.
So sweet. I love being the little guy with an edge.
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